THE IDEAL AND THE PRACTICAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 670, 23 May 1929, Page 8

THE IDEAL AND THE PRACTICAL

WITH town-planning schemes on a comprehensive scale, the difficulty is that commendable proposals are liable to assume an abstract and nebulous character, placing them beyond the sympathy and support of the mass of the people. Aucklanders are hardly likely to he so impressed with the comprehensive scheme submitted to local body delegates yesterday, and with the “master plan” designed to promote harmonious development, as they would he if town-planning idealists got right down to business and cleared up one or two of the untidy places in our midst. A combination of the ideal and the practical is evidently desirable in any town-planning movement. Had there "been in existence fifty or sixty years ago such a body as Mr. J. W. Mawson, Director of Town-planning, advocates, the local bodies of today might have been saved much heart-burning. Durham Lane, High Street and Swanson Street would not have been narrow lanes, but wide, accessible thoroughfares. Yet there might still have been problems, for what “master plan” conceived 60 years ago could have visualised the enormous change to be wrought by the introduction of the motor-ear ? For all our town-planning counsels and enthusiasms in 1929, social and mechanical developments at present beyond our imagination may so alter the systems of living and getting about that one hundred years hence we shall be condemned as heartily as we, today, criticise the plans of our forefathers. Still, if there is no stability about fashions in amusement and the processes of transport, there is at least an enduring standard of beauty. The principles of town-planning embrace the creation of harmonious streets, in which the facades of adjoining buildings do not clash. In some of the old London squares, where the town residences of the nobility raise their austere heights, the collective dignity of massed architecture is seen at its best. Regent Street, too, is a revelation of what systematic planning may accomplish. By comparison, Auckland architects at present have little chance. They have to meet the individual whims and fancies of their clients, and the medley of styles that is Queen Street is the sequel. If Mr. Mawson and his town-planning committees can do something to stimulate interest in this regional planning, they will not have worked in vain. If, too, they ean co-ordinate suburban development, preventing it from running out in long, straggly fringes with great gaps between that are neither town, suburb, nor good, green pasture-land, they will have earned the lasting gratitude of the people—even if they do not get it. But before they can accomplish these things, they must stir the public interest with some practical achievements at the start. The first steps must be short ones. Let the “master plans” come after that.